


as in a mirror, dimly

by Silikat



Category: Alice by Heart - Sheik/Sater/Sater & Nelson
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Character Study, Epilogue, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I keep writing fics about what happens after the ending of sad musicals, In a 'where are they now' kind of way, Just a bunch of mixed-up kids finding each other in the middle of a war, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silikat/pseuds/Silikat
Summary: London, 1946. The war is over at last, though its echoes remain in the bomb scars in the cities and the memories of the people who dwell within.It has been years since the shelter, but Alice could never forget her time spent underground, and the people she met there. But when one of them comes knocking on her door, she is forced to confront the memories she had hoped she'd left behind her that long night.Meanwhile, throughout the city, familiar faces try to make their way in an ever-shifting world. Their pasts cling to them like a second skin, as they pick through the rubble to try and find that elusive golden glimpse of happiness.
Relationships: Alice Spencer/Alfred Hallam, Alice Spencer/Tabatha, Harold Pudding/Angus
Comments: 5
Kudos: 14





	as in a mirror, dimly

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for mentions of violence and war, as befits the setting. Also character death, but not in gory detail, and mostly canon-typical. Sorry, Alfred.
> 
> Also, disclaimer! I started writing this before the book came out, and as of right now I still haven't read the book. The characters' backstories are based on my impressions from the show, and are probably going to be different. Unless either I or Steven Sater are psychic, I guess.

The year is 1946. England has won the War, though many of her cities are still sifting through the rubble – and in a terraced house in London, Alice Spencer stands in her kitchen, trying to remember if she has any tea left.

She could swear that she didn't use the last of it, but she isn't sure. It isn't as though she has visitors often, either – but her rations only extend to a couple of ounces a week, and that's if the shops have any in. And, she has to admit, she has been overindulging lately. Not that she can help it. She has always found drinking tea to be so calming; even in the noise and chaos of the Blitz, a good cup of tea could see her through until morning.

Alice sighs, and makes up her mind. In one firm gesture, she opens the top cupboard, grimacing at how bare it looks. She has half a bag of flour, some powdered milk and eggs that taste disgusting, a little margarine, a mostly-empty jam jar, and a small bag of hard-boiled sweets that she has been saving. Lying beside them, in a battered green tin that she salvaged from a bombed-out street, should be her tea rations. She twists off the lid and casts a critical eye inside – empty. More's the pity. She doesn't get new ration cards until next week, which seems an age away.

She replaces the tin in her cupboard, and slowly closes the door. "One would think we'd have no need for this anymore," she muses out loud. Alice remembers thinking, when rationing started, that as soon as the war ended everything would go back to normal. But the war has been over for more than a year, and the Ministry of Food have just announced that bread is going to be rationed soon. She can't help wondering what is going to come next.

Wandering back into her front room, Alice casts a rueful eye over the furnishings. She can barely afford to keep this house on her own, small and squashed though it is. It seems as though she is the only splash of colour in the place, with her worn baby-blue dress and navy cardigan. Everything else is in shades of grey and beige. Her furniture amounts to a battered typewriter sitting atop an old dining-room table, with a rough, splintered surface. Beside it sits an armchair in a hideous puce, with stuffing leaking out of one of the arms where the stitching has come undone. And her bookshelf, of course. That was the first thing she bought. A bookshelf, and as many second-hand books as she could salvage. It didn't matter what, not really, so long as she had something to read.

The books are faded and yellowing, the pages loose and water-stained, but for one. It sits on the edge of the shelf; a slim paperback novel all in blue, with the image of a boy sitting underneath a tree on the cover. The title is obscured by the bookend, a knight carved out of wood standing before an archway, but the author's name is clear. Alice Spencer.

Alice collapses into her armchair, wincing slightly as an exposed spring digs into her arm. The typewriter sits before her, silent and still. Its keys look to her like rows of teeth, silently mocking her. Which is strange – it isn't even as though she can use it, paper rationing still going strong. She wrote the first draft of her manuscript out longhand in notebooks, on the backs of telegrams, in between the articles of newspapers, anywhere she could find the paper. It was a minor miracle that she was in print at all.

She tips her head back, staring at the peeling plaster of the ceiling. Silence. It's far too quiet here. Alice is used to the noise of wartime – past the dim and distant glow of a golden childhood to a world cogged with dust and ash, the sounds of orphanages and air raid sirens and bombing every night for weeks. Even now, she finds herself expecting the quiet to be shattered by the wail of sirens.

It was her fault, mainly. At every turn, they had tried to get her out of London with the other kids, but she had refused time and again, until they stopped trying. She wasn't a child, not yet a woman; old enough to make her own choices, and they had so many other children to care about.

That was how she had lost Alfred, the first time. Back when they still lived with their families. His mother had sent him away when the war broke out, like so many mothers who feared the threat of bombs falling over London. _Her_ mother had refused - "You're too helpful here, young lady, or you would be if you got your nose out of them books." Nothing had happened, for a long time, and homesick children were recalled by lonely parents, to arrive back home just as the first German planes flew over British soil. Too late, then. Too late for any of them.

Alice remembers the day she lost it all. She was at school, in the hall, her teacher going through how to put on a gas mask when the air raid siren sounded. They made their way to the shelter in pairs, laughing and chatting along the way. They weren’t worried – why should they be? Every siren was a false alarm. But as Alice swept into the shelter the world seemed to shudder around them. Then they knew fear, sixty seven children shivering under the ground, everything plunged into blackness. Alice held someone’s hand in the dark, tried to keep herself from crying out; not that she would have been alone. The shelter was filled with the sounds of children, sobbing.

When the all-clear droned, it was as though they all let out a breath at once. Alice was the last in so she was the first out, and her hand trembled as she pushed open the metal doors. They were warm underneath her hand. Outside, dust clogged the air, hanging so heavy that Alice could barely see a yard in front of her.

At first, she had the vague thought that she’d wandered onto some other planet. This couldn’t be her home, couldn’t be her London. Where was the road, the school, the shops and the pubs and everything familiar? In front of her was a wasteland, bricks and rubble strewn all around. Smoke, thick and black, poured from the beaten shells of buildings barely recognisable. Iron fences were twisted and broken on the ground, ragged glass shards poking out from beneath cracked bricks. In the middle of the street there was a crater, a large chunk taken out of the road, the front half of a bus toppling into it.

By then more of the kids had emerged and stood, blinking, behind her. Distantly, she was aware of the sounds of crying and sniffling, muttered exclamations beneath the horrible wail of the all-clear siren. Alice just stood there, still. It was a long time before any of them moved.

They gathered in the hall of another school, streets away, while the teachers took lists of the children’s names and sent people out to find their parents. Some of the kids left that night, holding hands with mums and dads and brothers and sisters. Alice didn’t. They told her to stay, but her home wasn’t far. So she slipped out of the door and walked the whole way, hoping beyond hope that everything would be alright.

She couldn’t find her house, in the end. The whole street was gone, obliterated into nothing. She walked up and down it, searching desperately for a landmark, searching for _something_ in the fire and the smoke and the rubble. And all the while, trying not to see. A sooty arm poking out from under the brickwork, not moving. Splashes of crimson among the grey. Alice didn’t look any closer. Now, years later, she isn’t sure if she’s glad of that or not.

That was 1940, the first year the bombs fell. After that, she was shuffled around London’s orphanages, always crammed with unclaimed children managed by too few adults. That was when they had tried to evacuate her, but she had always refused. She wanted to wait for Alfred, she knows that now. He was the only person that she had left. No family, no home, nothing left of hers but what she took to school that morning. But he was out there somewhere, so she stayed in London, and waited out the war in shelters.

One they always used was the Underground station. Beds were set up on the platforms and in the tunnels, and nurses prowled to and fro as they sat, bored and scared all at once. Alice didn’t talk to the other children much. Most of the ones her age ignored her, but for poking fun, and she ignored them right back. She had her book. It was in her satchel that last school morning – _Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland_ , her favourite since forever.

Alice smiles as she glances to her bookshelf. Three copies of that same book sit there, rescued from second-hand shops. Next to them, carefully preserved, is the cover of her old copy. It was all she could salvage, after that night.

She is about to slip back into the past again when a sudden noise interrupts her reverie. A knock, firm and bold, on her front door. A slight frown creases her forehead – she isn’t expecting anyone – but still she goes to answer, smoothing down her light blue dress as she crosses into the hall.

When she opens the door there is a young woman standing there, her dark hair in neat victory curls. She wears a white blouse and dark trousers, with an oversized pink cardigan drawn over her shoulders. Her hands are shoved deep into her pockets, and there is an uneasy grin on her face.

Alice is the one to break the silence.

“Tabatha?”

*

Nigel’s mummy didn’t come for him that day, nor any day after. He wasn’t expecting anything different, really. His was the kind of story that was ten-a-penny in this new world of theirs. A young boy sent off to school by his doting parents, who returned after all the schoolmasters had gone off to war to find that his family was gone. So it goes. But he was young, and didn’t want to believe it. They had sent him off to school and said they’d see him when he came back, and they weren’t there so he had to still be at school. It made sense. If you ignored that he was cowering with a bunch of other kids in the Underground, sleeping between the rails and playing cards as the ceiling shook.

Never mind that school wasn’t a good place for him either. He was small, and studious, and more interested in books than sports. And the older children didn’t much like kids like that. There were others there like him but they were all too scared to talk to each other, so he was always alone. Alone when the older boys ripped pages out of his books or made him do their homework, alone when they made him carry their bags and do their homework, alone in an abandoned corridor nursing a black eye. He was glad to leave, when the war started.

Then he heard that they weren’t sending him home, him and a few others throughout the school. They were going straight to an orphanage. The teachers that were left told him it was just for now, just until they found his mum, and Nigel believed them because it was better than reality. A few of the schoolmasters that were too old or too ill to join the army stayed behind to keep an eye on them – the wild, mother-and-fatherless boys that found themselves without a home.

If the teasing was bad before, it was much worse then, with nobody to watch them but old men with hollow eyes and fatigue in their every move.

So Nigel kept to his studies. He read book after book, anything he could get his hands on. The nurses that looked after them seemed to like him, because he was quiet and didn't complain much. He'd learned not to complain.

And every day he'd wake up, and tell himself that today was the day. Today, his mum would come and lift him from this nightmare, back into the comfortable domestic world that he barely remembered. She'd been out looking for him, all this time. She'd just missed him by inches, and today she will find him, and bring him home.

The schoolmasters that stayed with the boys set homework for those who cared to listen. They numbered more, perhaps, than the teachers had been expecting – with little to do, even essays were an escape from a crumbling world. So Nigel wrote about King Lear and Hamlet and Macbeth and tried not to think about how all of them ended, in tragedy and death. There were about ten of them in total, the boys who still wanted to learn. One of them, Dorian, was assigned the bed next to Nigel's, and the two would help each other with spellings and grammar and thinking through problems until the nurses came and called lights-out.

Dorian was a couple of years older than Nigel, though it wasn't obvious from his small frame. He had mousy brown hair and big wire-frame glasses that had been broken in a bombing raid, and a permanently nervous expression on his round face. Nigel had seen him around school a few times before, mostly when he was hiding out in the library. Now, outside of the comfortable world of school, the boys managed to talk for the first time. Dorian’s sister was going to come and get him, he kept saying. She worked as a typist in the city. It wouldn’t be long now, he said.

Nigel often said the same things.

But the months and years wound on, and nobody came. He waited, and waited, and waited, and still nothing changed. Bombs rained on the city, children cowered in shelters, and Nigel and Dorian huddled together under a blanket, trying to understand calculus and waiting for the world to end.

They were no longer boys. By then, the war was near to ending, and the young men had continued with their studies. The old men who taught them were still legitimate teachers, despite their classrooms being Underground stations. They recommended that the two of them should go to university, when they could.

And then it was over. There were cheers and bunting and flag-waving in the bombed-out streets. Nigel remembers that day well – him and Dorian blinking in the sunlight, two young men alone in the world, mother-and-fatherless but with a future, at last. One of Nigel’s professors recommended him to a university to read English – up north, where he had never been, where there were no memories on every dusty corner, where he could be someone new. “You’ve got a talent, young Nigel. You should use it.” And besides, Dorian was coming too.

So they went, the two of them. They stood before the great oak doors together, not quite believing their luck. They had some money, between them – a fund for war orphans. Nigel’s father had been killed in action. So had Dorian’s, and so many other fathers. It wasn’t much, but it got them a few rooms over a shop in the town, and they could find jobs. That was the plan.

There were bullies here, too. Of course they were. Strapping young men with strong bodies and haunted eyes who jostled them in corridors, laughing openly. Heroes come home from war with all their limbs and minds intact, or at least that’s the impression they wanted to give. Laughing at the scrawny kids born just too late to enlist. Not that it stopped the judgements. Nigel left his desk at the library one day for a moment, and returned to find a white feather sitting on top of his notes, and giggling emanating from behind a bookcase.

He didn’t care. He threw himself into his work. Shakespeare and Dickens and essays and tests. Words and words and words – his life was lived in words, despite the paper shortage. Long nights would find him sitting at their single desk, chattering obsessively about some small passage to Dorian, who would laugh and debate and tell him to go to bed already.

His professors told him he was doing well. Not a few times they insinuated that, if he kept up the work, he could find himself among their ranks soon enough. And he thinks once more, about that lonely boy in the boarding school halls, sheltering under the earth, his arms full of books and his head full of thoughts. Of the insults that echoed down the corridors. And he thinks, what a change it would have been, to have someone there who understood what that was like. Who could have come for him, when he needed someone.

It's a long way away, of course. It will be hard, undoubtedly. But if there’s one thing Nigel has learned, it’s patience. And besides, he owes this to himself. To the boy he once was, and all the boys like him. So that is what he will do.

*

Alice spoons sugar into a teacup – two spoons for Tabatha, one for herself. She sets them down with a clink on her little table. All of the furniture has been scavenged from second-hand shops; she’s never thought to be embarrassed about it before. That is in the back of her mind, however. She’s still staring, as much as she can, at Tabatha, sitting opposite her.

She doesn’t look that different, that’s what Alice notices. Older, of course. They were all children, back then – she’s not that much older than a child now herself, but she was worse then. Naïve. She thought that the world would bend to her will if she shouted loud enough, that if she wanted it then everything would go her way.

Tabatha coughs, slightly. She takes a sip from the mug in front of her, cradling its heat in her hands. She’s shivering slightly, Alice realises. It wasn’t that cold outside, or so Alice thought. Then again, it’s a long walk to the nearest train station.

“So,” says Alice, and her voice seems far too loud in the silence of her room. “How have you been?” The platitude is awkward on her lips. Her heart thumps in her chest – her mind is screaming “ _Say something, say something!_ ” but all she can think of is vague and polite and not at all what she wants to say.

Tabatha smiles. “Well as I can be, under the circumstances.” Her gaze is on the mug of tea, watching the steam wisp off its surface.

“What are you doing, these days?” She didn’t want to say that really, didn’t want to open that subject, but it’s said now and cannot be unsaid.

Tabatha’s lip curls slightly down. She clicks her jaw, her fingers drumming against the table. "I'm a drifter – a nomad.” She meets Alice’s eye, and there is a spark of amusement there. “Travel broadens the mind, so they say."

Alice scoffs, casting her mind over the rubble and ruin that she sees on the newsreels, the parts of the city still wild and ravaged by bomb craters and ash. "Travelling? What's there to see, anymore?"

"You'd be surprised,” Tabatha smirks. “There's a world outside of London, you know – a world unspoiled by German bombs."

“How very romantic.” She keeps her tone as light as possible, but Tabatha still frowns.

“Oh, scoff all you want. The countryside is still beautiful.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Alice shifts in her seat. It’s been a while since she’s had something like this. A conversation, with nothing pre-ordained to talk about. What does one do in a normal conversation. Talk about the weather?

Tabatha is still smiling. She takes another careful sip of her tea, her eyes not leaving Alice’s face. “I don’t have to ask what you’re up to, of course. Congratulations on that.”

Alice’s heart skips a beat. “Pardon?”

Tabatha coughs, arching an eyebrow at Alice over her tea. "I looked you up, Alice Spencer. You're quite the little novelist now."

"Oh,” Alice says, feeling her cheeks flush scarlet. She had hoped it wouldn’t come up. “It's nothing, really." And, really, it was nothing. Just a silly children’s book, nothing special. She had started working on it in those last years of the war, when she was on her own in a country collapsing around her ears. Just a story about a boy, escaping to a fantasy land far away where yes, there were dangers and trials and troubles, but at the end of the day he was safe, and well. She had started with that image, the boy peering through the roots of a tree and seeing a clear blue sky not darkened by German planes, the image that graced the cover.

Just a fantasy story for children. It wasn’t really going to go anywhere but her mind. But she’d written it all out into a series of journals, and then typed up on an old and broken typewriter, and then one day by chance she’d met a man who worked for a publishing company. He took it in to his boss, and before Alice could blink, she was a published author.

That’s what she’s supposed to be doing, now. Writing. Her second novel. But for some reason now, the words won’t flow.

Tabatha waves a hand, dismissing Alice’s train of thought. "Not nothing. Look at this!” She takes the book down from Alice’s shelf, puts it on the table between them. “I've been travelling up and down the country, and all you see is these grey, depressed faces without a spark of creativity to share. You've got talent, kid."

"You're not that much older than me,” Alice says, deadpan. “And I was always a reader, you know that. It seemed right to give some words back."

"And at a good time, too. When the horrors passed, the world was looking for stories to help them forget." Tabatha's voice is dreamy, far-away. She shakes her head and, smirking, picks the book up off the table and flicks through a few pages. "Not that all of us have forgotten. Come now, Alice, 'Albert Halifax in Dreamland'?"

Alice's heart sinks into her belly. She grabs the book from Tabatha, cheeks burning. "You weren't supposed to read it," she mutters, gently placing her book back on the shelf. She doesn't turn around again, doesn't want to meet Tabatha's knowing gaze.

Tabatha's eyebrow arcs upwards. "Still. Hardly subtle."

Fists clenching by her side, Alice closes her eyes. "If all you’re going to do is make fun, why did you even come here? To rub it in my face?" She hasn't turned around, doesn't want to see Tabatha's reaction. "You should know how much this means to me. Why did you come at all?"

A deafening silence falls throughout the room.

*

When the war came to England, Nurse Cross knew that she had to do her bit, despite the inconvenience of having been born the wrong gender to go and join the fighting. She had been a typist, before. Her mother had wanted her to get married to a nice young man from their Hertfordshire village and raise a family, but she had never been the type that cared for screaming brats, and anyway, she wanted to be a career girl. So she'd left for the big city, laughing at her mother's provincial ambitions.

There was an irony, there.

Because when the war started and all the young men were enlisting and shipping out, she found herself watching them with a strange sort of envy. So she did the next best thing, volunteered to be trained as a nurse, and before she knew it she was in a hospital in the city, learning first aid and patient care.

It was long, hard work, but it was important. England would soon need nurses, that's what the papers kept saying. Oh, of course we were going to win the war – it would be all over by Christmas! – but you can't fight a war without men getting injured and that was where she stepped in. There was the threat, too, of the Germans attacking England from the sky. She helped organise children evacuate London in their droves, waving them off from the train station and then getting back to the hospital to train.

The talk all around the hospital – well, properly it was an infirmary, funded by the government and built next to a cemetery – was of gas attacks and bombs, but nothing like that happened, not for a while. In the meantime, she was learning and growing. She was spending sixteen hours at the hospital a day, then eighteen, returning home just in time to set her alarm and collapse into bed. Doctors complimented her on her work ethic, then told her how tired she looked, and wouldn't the little lady be more comfortable if she spent less time at the hospital? She didn't listen to them, of course. She never listened to that kind of talk.

Then the bombs started falling, and then she _was_ busy. Their hospital treated those who couldn’t pay, so naturally it was crammed full of invalids, people missing limbs, people shot full of shrapnel, people crushed under buildings. And then later, after the months had passed. Illness and disease swept through communities suddenly unable to feed themselves as well because the goods ships were being shot at.

She was in the middle of it, her arms stained to the elbow with blood, red spattered over her crisp white uniform as she assisted the doctors in any way she could. She wasn’t blind, of course – she saw the way that the doctors looked at her when she smoothly stepped in to help with a procedure or, horror of horrors, corrected one of them on a mistake they had made.

One day Nurse Cross arrived at the hospital to find an administrator firmly taking her by the hand. She had been reassigned, he told her, to somewhere more suited to her skills. Somewhere she could flourish. When she looked back at the hospital, she could see the men with whom she had worked lined up by the door, smirking as they watched her leave.

She argued, of course, but that wasn’t enough. So she began her new life, at one of the many orphanages that had appeared to fill the need. Children were supposed to be out of the cities, she thought ruefully as she helped another snivelling toddler dress. What were all of these brats doing here?

Not that she was unkind. Of course, she was trying as hard as she could. But they kept sending new children in, or aunts and uncles and cousins in the country would take them, or they would be evacuated out, and honestly she couldn’t keep track. There were, of course, a few faces she kept seeing. Generally the older children, who should have been helping with the rest – old enough to resist all efforts to move them somewhere safer, and to talk back to her. Always, they were talking back. She just didn't have time for dreamers. Wandering around with your head in the clouds isn't practical, especially if those clouds are full of German bombers.

Could she help it if her patience ran a bit thin?

Them, and the doctor assigned to them. Doctor Butridge, who had to have every word shouted to him but wouldn’t admit he had a problem. He was an army medic at first, who had been caught in some shelling and lost his hearing. But he was still a doctor, so after being declared an invalid and sent home, he was assigned to Nurse Cross’ orphanage, for her to deal with on top of everything else.

So she got on with it. What else was there to do? She was there to help the war effort whatever way she could. So she wiped noses and handed out ever-thin rations and watched them play and scream and fight and didn’t leave. Didn’t go home.

Not until the war was over.

Six years of fighting. For her, and for the men. Six years of bombing, first the Luftwaffe then the V-1s and V-2s. Six years of blood and bandages, red and white. Of stitching up wounds and administering medication and listening to them screaming in the night. Of burns and bruises and broken men. She was taken out of the orphanages in ’42, and sent back to real hospitals, to real work. Butridge came with her. It seemed she was the only nurse who could manage him, not that _that_ was saying much. Still, when the time came for the war to end, and the inevitable downsizing of the hospital staff came, she found herself unwilling to leave. For the duration of the war, her thoughts had been on reclaiming her life, away from this system. But here, she had helped people. Made a difference, in the way she could.

So she stayed. Oh, she had a break first. Went back home to visit her mother, who subjected her to a full hour of scolding for not even bothering to write. Spent some time wandering the ruins of the city. But within a full month of the war ending, she was back in the nurse’s uniform, standing at the side of the shattered people that were pouring back from Europe.

Nurse Cross wasn’t built for kindness. Kindness doesn’t win a war. And this was _her_ war, looking after those who needed it. But she still cared, in her way. It was her duty, she told herself as she changed bandages and treated wounds and wrote to the families of dead and dying men. Her cross to bear.

She was a good nurse. She knew that. She didn’t need anyone else’s validation to know it. She was good nurse, and she was going to carry on being a good nurse. For as long as she was needed.

*

"I wanted to see you."

Alice takes in a breath. There is something different in Tabatha's voice. The snideness, the sarcasm, has leeched out of it, to be replaced with something different.

She turns, to see the other woman standing there still, her arms crossed and a half-smile on her lips. "I know we barely know each other, really," she says. "But I've seen you at your worst, and your best. And when I saw your book right there on the shelf…well, I just had to see how you turned out.”

Alice nods, slowly, to herself. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t wondered about the people she had met, in those long nights under the world, since the war’s end. It was just that she has no way of finding them, any more. Not after Clarissa and Dodgy disappeared, and Nigel went to university, and Harold and Angus went off somewhere together, and…

No. She isn’t going to think about that. Not here, not with someone else in the room.

She realises that she hasn’t said anything for a while. Her pride swallows an apology. “So you just appear on my doorstep, having tracked me down. Not at all strange,” she snaps, throwing herself back down in her chair.

Tabatha stands there still, hovering in the centre of the room. “Like I said. I wanted to see you.”

She is being evasive, Alice notes. Massaging her temples, she tilts her head towards the other chair, motioning for Tabatha to make herself comfortable. After a second, she complies. Back to normal, Alice thinks. Just a conversation between two old friends. Nothing to worry about here.

"Do you hear from the others at all?" Alice’s voice sounds unnatural to her own ears. It’s too high, too polite – her talking-to-her-publisher voice. She doesn’t even know what she’s thinking at the moment. She feels detached, unmoored from her body, floating away like a barrage balloon that’s gotten loose from its cables.

If Tabatha notices anything strange, she doesn’t say it. "Alice, we met in an air raid shelter. It was hardly a social club."

"You're here now."

"So I am." She pauses, tapping a single finger on the edge of her teacup. Her fingernail chimes against the porcelain. “You’re the most public, I suppose.” Her head has turned to the side, gazing out of the window. “Perhaps I just wanted a reminder that those days were real, after all. Not just some dream we were all having.”

“I wish,” Alice says, in an undertone. She doesn’t mean for Tabatha to hear; didn’t mean to say it aloud. But she sees Tabatha’s dark eyes staring at her once more, and looks down to the carpet.

When Tabatha speaks again, she has the grace to look uncomfortable. “Or maybe that’s why I came. I told you back then, didn’t I? To say goodbye.” Her gaze drifts once more to the book, ‘Albert Halifax’ standing tall on the cover. Alice followed her eyeline, her jaw set, her face carefully neutral.

Then something seems to spark in her mind. She stands once more, setting her teacup down carefully on the table. A navy blue coat hangs over a coatrack by the door – she takes it, throwing it over her shoulders. Tabatha stands, confusion creeping onto her face.

“Come with me,” says Alice, by way of explanation. “There’s something you should see.”

*

Clarissa and Dodgy left the orphanage together. It was a practical decision. They made a good team, him and her, staring down the end of the world with a snide grin and a sarcastic quip. They live on the outskirts of London – “A horrible rough area, darling, but needs must.” – in a few rooms they rent with whatever money they can scrape together. It's a far cry from what Clarissa is used to, even now, but she is learning to live with it.

She had grown up in a townhouse, in a far more respectable part of the city, where every night was a constant party despite the homeless and destitute that lined the streets outside. Her father was in industry, her mother a socialite, and she was raised by nannies and governesses. Despite the depression outside their door, she had grown used to a life of luxury.

But German bombs don't care much for the nuances of class. Clarissa's parents didn't send her away with the evacuees – " _Our_ daughter, given to some farm out in God-knows-where? Nonsense!" – so she was left in the city. At first she was smug. The war was still a phoney one and she laughed with her parents at the panicking labourers who had jumped the gun, and never mind the government proclamations. Then the sirens wailed one night for real, and the ground shook with the impact of bombing, and they were forced to sit in a crowded shelter night after night waiting for the world to explode.

The day they were separated, Clarissa's parents were visiting friends and left her with a nanny, despite the fact that she was old enough to look after herself, and that they were meant to be celebrating that night. Clarissa was turning fifteen. But they weren't back by the time the night sky lit up red with smouldering buildings, and Clarissa grasped her nanny's hand as the two of them raced into the nearest shelter. So she spent her birthday underground, in a crush of frightened people. When they emerged, it was to a wasteland.

She still doesn't know what happened to her parents, only that they didn't come back. Without the guarantee of their money, her nanny dumped her at an orphanage and walked off into the night, leaving Clarissa with just a small suitcase full of things that they had salvaged and a curt goodbye.

That was where she met Dodgy. He was sprawled across a sofa, that first day, staring at the ceiling, but he called out a greeting when she came in. "Welcome to Bedlam!" She rolled her eyes at him and stuck her nose up in the air.

The orphanage was a small wooden building, falling apart at the seams and crowded with children. There seemed to be a constant stream of them, flooding in from bomb-struck areas of the city. The older children were expected to help out, or else just left to their own devices. Well, Clarissa was an only child, and not accustomed to wailing, snot-nosed brats. She just retreated to a nook upstairs, in a small room in the attic with an old and tarnished writing-desk, where she could write to any relatives that she recalled. There were aunts and uncles, out in the country – family with large estates, who surely could take in one orphan child.

She was interrupted from her writing by a snide voice. "Look at you," it said from behind her. "Aren't many people writing letters in here, love."

Clarissa drew her papers in to her chest. "Well, some of us actually have relatives to talk to," she snapped, before turning to see who had spoken. It was the boy from downstairs – Dodgy, she would learn that night, though he never told her how he'd gotten the nickname. He had a grey scarf draped around his shoulders, and his hands in the pockets of his waistcoat. One eyebrow was raised in an expression of wry amusement.

"Oh, don't be like that," he said. "There's hardly anyone worth talking to in this dump, I'm going positively out of my mind."

Clarissa couldn't help herself. " _Going_?"

He smirked. "Going, going, gone, dear; but who'd notice another madman around here?"

They stuck close together after that. Of course, it was out of convenience more than anything. None of the older kids were good company – too mopey, too weird, too boring. And of course, Clarissa's auntie would come for her soon. She'd written the letter. That meant she had to be coming.

(Pages and pages, months of writing, until she finally got a response. Her auntie. She was so sorry, she couldn't come down to London just then. Their house had been...something, it was censored, so Clarissa had to stay put. For now. That was the phrase she held onto. Just for now.)

But the days passed and turned into months, and Clarissa was still there. Every day was the same – in the daytime they would try and stay out of the way of the screaming, snivelling, sooty children, usually nesting up in the attic and passing the time with card games or talking. Then at night, they'd wait in their rooms for the inevitable wail of the air raid sirens, when they'd troop down into the Underground for shelter, every night praying that a bomb would fall on the orphanage and they wouldn't have to go back. No such luck. Another birthday passed with nothing to mark it – true, she'd had a letter from her auntie promising that she'd take her away and throw a party, but despite Clarissa watching for the whole day she never arrived. There was no letter to explain it. She didn't want to think about that, actually.

Still she kept hold of the relics of her previous life – her dresses, her makeup, the pearls she kept misplacing (usually found around Dodgy's neck). And the days kept getting longer, until Dodgy looked over to Clarissa with that knowing grin of his and held his hand out. "You know," he drawled. "I think we've outgrown this place."

"I quite agree," Clarissa said. "What do you have in mind?"

They ran that night, after the all-clear sounded through the streets and the other children were shuffling back through the orphanage doors. They ran through the London streets, just the two of them, hand-in-hand; jumping over potholes and bomb craters, dodging around the adults who stood outside the wreckages of houses and pubs. They ran, and they didn't stop, not until Clarissa, laughing, collapsed against a wall. Her sides were heaving – she hadn't run this far in her life – and Dodgy looked up at the building she was leaning against. It was a tenement house, bisected by a bomb. Half the building crumbled into a heap of bricks and dust, but the other stood tall as it ever had. Dodgy looked it up and down, assessing it with a critical eye. "I think we may have found something here," he said, squinting through a window. "There's a whole floor that's intact here, and probably ripe for the taking. Can't imagine its owner's coming back, anyhow." He gestured to the rubble beside them.

"They say lightning doesn't strike twice," said Clarissa.

"Does that hold true for Jerry?"

"Let's hope."

So that was where they lived. Squatting in an abandoned building. Just two rooms – a kitchen and a bedroom, but the furniture was intact and it was free. It was freedom, in its own way. Nobody to answer to but themselves. No nurses, no doctors, nobody to look after. Just them, together, with the few possessions they could keep.

They had a suitcase each, full of the things they had brought with them. Clarissa's contained the relics of her home – jewellery, dresses, the watch her mother had given her that last morning. Dodgy's was mostly clothes, though as she watched, he peeled away the bottom layer to reveal a treasure trove. Money, more than they had seen the last year, and ration cards. Enough for them to get by, for a while. When she asked where he got it from, he just put a finger to his lips and winked. She thought she knew, even so. He always made a point of being friendly to the nurses back at the orphanage – she wouldn't be surprised if he'd asked them to look the other way while he took supplies.

So began the next phase of their lives. They stayed in their newfound home, doing the same things they had always done, but without anyone to yell "Lights out!" or tell them to go and babysit some crying toddlers. They could just stay there, long as they liked, and be. And when the sirens wailed and the bombs started falling, there they would be – huddled together under the Morrison shelter the previous occupants had kindly left. It felt like sleeping in a cage. But then Dodgy would sling an arm around her and she would fall asleep, listening to the sound of his breathing and waiting for the bombs to stop.

It wasn't long before they ran out of money, and had to start selling things. Goodbye fine clothes, pearls, relics of their childhoods when everything was fine. They were cast out to pawn shops at a fraction of their worth, and turned into food, matches, whatever they needed. If they were careful, they had enough to fly under the radar for a few months.

There were a few close calls. Nobody from the orphanage came looking; Clarissa supposed that none of them cared enough, two less mouths to feed. But policemen often walked by on the streets outside, and they had to douse their lights and wait for them to pass. What they were doing wasn't _illegal_ , Dodgy often professed, but they wouldn't like it either. That, and every time they went to buy something – food, supplies – people kept looking askance at Dodgy. More than once, she'd heard mutterings from around them. About why a healthy-looking lad like that wasn't away fighting.

Dodgy _had_ been called up, just before they left the orphanage, but he failed his medical. Clarissa had no idea why. He had always been in good health, despite the ever-shorter rations they enjoyed, and had escaped any injury more severe than a scraped knee. Dodgy was unusually quiet the days after the exam, and always brushed her off whenever she asked about it. Later, he would smile and wave a hand - "Flat-footed, so they said, and a slight squint. I'm officially useless," - which Clarissa severely doubted, but never enough to probe.

He was still a mystery to her. All that time spent talking and she still knew barely anything about him. Whenever she tried to ask, his answers ranged from the defensive - "And why do you need to know, dear?" - to the evasive - "Oh, it's all in the past, and the past has passed, so no reason to dwell," - to the ridiculous. "I'm the King of England's bastard, but don't tell anyone."

Sometimes he would disappear for days on end, leaving her alone to try and figure out how to darn socks (he was always better at that), only to return with armfuls of clothes, or food, or books, or random knicknacks he had taken from bombed houses. To hear him tell it, he would dart in just before the building collapsed around his ears, amidst the fire and smoke of a night raid, grabbing all he could see. Once he came back with a mostly-intact set of Tarot cards, and she spent the night pretending she could read their fortunes. In her version, the war was soon over, and they would find that one of their stolen treasures was worth a fortune.

They lived like that for years, with only what they could carry in their suitcases. It wasn’t just at one place. They moved around the city whenever they wished, running from one cloud of rubble and ash to the next with a smile on their soot-streaked faces, washing in public washhouses and eternally mending their clothes, listening to music drifting across from occupied houses and reading by candlelight. They smelled of dirt and smoke, they never had enough food, but they had their freedom. Occasionally, they’d come across another band of teenagers living rough, and share whatever illicit alcohol Dodgy had procured for the night. Most of the time it was just them.

And then the war was over, and their bubble burst. No more was the city alight with incendiary bombs or doodlebugs every night. Now, they needed to find something to do for the rest of their lives.

Clarissa couldn’t quite come to terms with that, somehow. She had been living each day as it was for so long, certain that soon a bomb would hit them both, or the Germans would finally invade, or something. But here they were, and they were alive.

They were lucky. Dodgy found a job in a little café in some backstreet somewhere. She cleaned herself up, put on her best frock, and somehow landed work as a shop girl. It was long and hard, day after day spent on her feet and forcing a smile as people she might once have called her peers looked past her without seeing. She would complain about it every night in the café, while Dodgy half-listened from behind the counter as he made coffee.

Soon they had enough to rent a few rooms, nearby – “No more squatting? We’re living the high life.” It was not a neighbourhood her parents would have approved of. Full of labourers and degenerates and down-on-their-luck artists, the dregs of society that her mother would have stuck her nose up at. Though, Clarissa supposed, she belonged to that number now.

Dodgy spent most of his nights out. Odd shifts, he kept saying; she didn’t believe him for a moment, not when he would come back exhausted but happy, with a grin that wouldn’t leave and smelling like cheap wine and cigarette smoke. They weren’t together, though people assumed it, and she was glad of the quiet time where she could sit and relax, with nobody watching her. 

Clarissa wasn’t surprised that morning, when she came back home to find him wearing one of her dresses. She was early – he hadn’t been expecting her for an hour or so. They froze there, her in the doorway, him reading a newspaper, staring at each other. Red was creeping onto Dodgy’s face. Clarissa just smiled, and sat down next to him. “Not quite your colour,” she said. “And you’re taller than me anyhow. Next time we have a little spare dough, I’ll see if I can find anything that would fit you better.”

In an instant, it felt like everything changed between them. Like an understanding that neither of them had felt before. For perhaps the first time, the two of them relaxed around each other, knowing that they didn’t have to hide. Dodgy started to bring men back home with him; Clarissa flirted with the other shop girls. This was London, cosmopolitan, and they lived among the poets and artists and starving bohemians who cared more for beauty than bread. It was as though the sun had risen, after a long night.

They were together. They were free. And, Clarissa supposed, that was all they needed.

*

"Why are we here?"

A few streets away from Alice's house is a little church, its ancient and weather-beaten stone still intact, the spire cresting the heavens. Alice, leading, pushes open a gate in a squat stone wall that leads into the graveyard. Tabatha is a few paces behind, trepidation etched into her face.

"Because," Alice says. "This is where I go, when I need a little stillness."

Leaning on the stone wall is a marker – a piece of wood, really, torn from something and left inelegantly submerged in the dirt. Two things are written on it, a name and a date. _Alfred Hallam, 1926-1941_. It isn’t where he’s buried, of course. Alice doesn’t even know where that would be. But it’s something concrete, something solid, something she can visit.

Tabatha’s eyes flicker over the scene, and her frown deepens.

“I told myself I’d grow up.” Alice says. “That’s what he’d want me to do. Leave him behind, grow up, face the world.” She kneels down by the side of the marker, brushing it lightly with one hand. “He should have had that chance too.”

“Alice…”

She stands, and looks at Tabatha. Manages a shaky smile. “It’s alright,” she says. “It’s not like before. I know he’s gone. That doesn’t stop me missing him, or remembering. I can’t help remembering.” For a while, she saw it every time she closed her eyes. His pale face. Blood on white sheets. The sound of coughing, too loud and too long. “But when I sat down to write, it’s as though all of that just poured out of me. I’m not obsessing, just remembering. Moving on.”

“Funny way to show me you’re not stuck in the past,” Tabatha says, but there is a lightness in her voice. “Sorry,” she says after a pause. “I didn’t come here to lecture you.”

They make their way to a bench, near to the church, overlooking the street. People pass by, to and fro, going about their lives. Above them, a blue sky. Birdsong is filling the afternoon air. It is one of those days that is cold, but bright. Picturesque, so long as you’re wearing a coat.

Alice is talking, her hands drumming on the sides of the bench as she tries to articulate what she is thinking. "I always suppose – it's a silly thought, of course – I always think this is the sort of life someone would want me to lead. Someone trying to imagine a better future. A pessimist, obviously."

Tabatha rubs her arms through her thin cardigan. "What makes you say that?"

Alice waves a hand. "An optimist wouldn't have made the Blitz last so long. Or killed all those people."

Tabatha nods. "Like you're living in someone else's dream."

"Yes! Yes, that precisely."

A smile. "You were always a fantasist, Alice,” Tabatha says. She is looking out to the street, watching people as they wander by. “Always with your head in the clouds. How did you end up the successful one?” Her tone is light still, but there is an artifice to it.

Alice, glancing over, just shrugs. “It just sort of happened.” They sit for a second, in the stillness. The sun’s weak rays beat down on them, illuminating Tabatha’s face, the dark circles under her eyes. Alice looks at her, for what feels like the first time. Her eyes are puffy, her hair limp at the back, her cardigan ragged at the elbows. Her hands now rest on her knees, fidgeting slightly with a loose thread. Alice places one of her hands over Tabatha’s, giving her a gentle smile. “Did you really come all this way just to see how I was?”

She starts, looking over Alice with uncertainty. “No, I-" She bites her lip, her arms once more held tight to her body. There is tension in her small frame, a cloud over her face. Something she isn’t saying. Something she doesn’t want to say? Alice watches her think, anxiety building in her chest.

Tabatha closes her eyes, and what she says next surprises them both.

“Kiss me?”

*

Harold doesn't remember who he was before he joined the army.

Such fun. That was the thing. They thought it was all going to be such fun, running off to be part of the war effort. Like little boys playing soldiers. He was too young – or was he? He finds it hard to remember, now. The Army had their ways of getting around that, of course. Word of advice, son; write the number 18 down on a scrap of paper and stick it in your shoe, so when they ask you if you're over eighteen you're not lying. What fun, what larks, what a jolly old time. Him and his friends down at the recruiting station, and the old sergeant grinning at them as they signed their names on the line. He passed his physical and it was off to training for the lot of them, all pressed and polished in their new uniforms, kit bags over their shoulders.

Training was hard, of course it was, but there was one thing that kept him going all through it. One person. Arthur, with his carrot-coloured hair and his lopsided grin. Arthur, who Harold had fancied back in their school days, long before that kiss behind the bike sheds when nobody else was watching, when it was just them together against the rest of the world. Arthur was there, and so Harold was strong, and he could run and carry and fight like they taught him to, no problem, no questions asked. They had all been brought up on the Boy's Own paper, glorious stories of adventure and derring-do in strange lands from boys just like them, clean and strong and healthy and always ready to do their bit for England. And so they weren't afraid, because they had no reason to be.

Madness. All is madness.

Because then they were overseas, in the mud and the fire and the trenches, and the light soon faded from their eyes as they realised everything they had signed up for. There was no honour, no glory, no easy victory. And true, Harold had heard the stories of the last Great War, but that was long ago. That couldn't happen to him. But then he was in France and he was fighting, and fighting hard, the cold metal of his gun against his hand, and that was when he realised what this war truly was.

Here's a riddle – when is a man not a man? When his brains are staining the mud in front of you, and his guts are spilling out of his belly, but so too when there's nought but a tiny hole on his forehead and he looks for all the world like he's sleeping. So many ways to die, so many ways to suffer, and Harold saw them all it seemed, over there. One moment you could be talking to a man and the next he would be on the floor, blood pouring from shrapnel wounds that the doctor would have to pick out of his flesh before they got infected, limbs turning black and rotting from the inside, and all the while he was screaming and screaming and just wouldn't stop.

There was refuge, even in that. Arthur, mostly. He was always by Harold's side, with a snide joke and a sloppy smile and a kiss when nobody was looking. Or even when they were – turns out that the men eager to run off to war weren't all the marrying kind, so to speak, and when your mates were dying around you these things seemed less important. Harold and Arthur would sip muddy tea in the dugout, the sound of the guns muffled by a closed door, and just for that moment everything would feel alright. Like they could go out and face it, the endless machinery of war that ground them between the cogs, if only they had those precious moments.

Then. Then there was the red day, when they came out to fight with the rising sun, and all the sky was crimson like the blood they churned up as they marched. They were all stood on the line, waiting for a signal, when there was a series of popping sounds from up ahead. Harold was stood there next to Arthur, sharing a whispered joke at their commander's expense, when Arthur fell to the floor, collapsed like someone had cut his strings. And Harold was on his knees, shaking him, calling his name, but there was a neat hole in his forehead and his eyes had gone dark and Harold knew then that he was lost. There were screams, he remembers the screaming, and maybe he was the one who was screaming, he doesn't know. All he could see was that face, that beautiful face, frozen and pale and still. And he could feel strong arms dragging him away, and he was fighting them with all his strength, because all he wanted was to curl up next to Arthur and wait for a bomb to take them both. That was how it was meant to be. Both of them together, or not at all.

His memories are all twisted, after that.

A hospital tent. He lay in a cot, surrounded by men bleeding and crying and screaming in the night, missing eyes and legs and arms, who one day go still and are thrown out the door. Then another, and another. A young nurse stared at him with naked fear. Doctors, dark circles around their eyes, shook their heads when they saw him. Everyone was saying words that he didn't understand, and everywhere he looked he could see it. The battlefield. The mud and the blood and the fire and the fear, and Arthur's dead face.

Invalid, that was what they called him. He was out of the army, with a King's Badge and a pittance to live on and that was all. But he was going back to England – old Blighty, God bless her! – and for a moment he thought that he could leave all the madness behind him. But since he'd left the country the Germans had made their move, and bombs were falling from the sky even here. For weeks, months, he couldn't say which, he lay in a hospital bed in London and wondered if he'd even left the war behind. The air raid sirens howled in his ears and he remembered the red day, and was lost to the world.

There was a shelter, used by the hospital and nearby orphanages. It was an Underground station, repurposed to fit however many people would cram into it. He ended up on the edges of it, lost between the war and the home front, flickering in and out of reality. There were so many children around, kids his age or not too much younger, but he couldn't think of them like that. Every time he looked at them, all he could see was the ways they could be killed. Gunshot, shrapnel, bomb, mine, gas, barbed wire, bayonet. Human bodies are so fragile.

One boy there who wasn’t like the rest. Two of them were laughing at him, always laughing – one more in a corner muttering to himself, the girl sitting and reading that book for hours on end, but one that was different. The older lad. Old enough to be conscripted; ah, but dock workers were exempt, too useful to the war effort, he explained in a drawl. On the good days, when Harold remembered where and when he was, they would sit and talk while the world above shook from the shelling. Angus, that was his name, always reclining at the side, pipe in hand, eyes half focused. He was on his own too, so he said. Family non-evident, in some other part of the country, and so here he was.

The Red Cross nurse passed out cups of tea that were slightly more palatable than the mud they drank out in the trenches. Angus and Harold sat together in a corner, talking or watching or waiting for the signal to go back up top. Sometimes it was fine. Sometimes he would slip, and forget, and the brickwork would fade into mud and barbed wire and panic would course through his body as the sound of explosions filled the air.

Always there was someone waiting for him there. A face, breaking in through the blur – Arthur? No, this face was surrounded by a cloud of dark hair, smoke on its lips. Angus. And then Harold would remember, for a while.

They kept going back to that shelter, again and again. Harold from the hospital, Angus from wherever it is that he lived. And then Angus started showing up at the hospital, drifting through the other wards. On his off-time, he would come and sit with Harold, and for a few snatched moments Harold would feel alright again. Until he went away, and the darkness drew in, and every shadow seemed an enemy in disguise.

When the time came for him to, finally, leave the hospital, the doctors deciding that they could do nothing more for him, it was Angus who offered him a spare room. Harold's mind still wandered the fields of France in a daze, so they were living on Angus' job and Harold's pension money, however little that was. Angus bought food and sorted out ration books and kept their dingy rooms lit and warm. Harold sat in a second-hand armchair and waited for him to come back from work, smelling of salt and rotting fish, pipe already in his hand.

And when there was a sharp noise from outside and Harold found himself squatting in a field once again, machine gun cold in his hand, wild-eyed and ready to take down the first enemy to cross his path, Angus would sit beside him and talk to him gently, until the mud and the blood and the turmoil faded away, and he was back where he should be.

“Real?” he would whisper, and Angus’ eyes would crease up into a smile.

“Real,” he said, and his words were a promise soft as a kiss.

So one night, Harold leaned over, and kissed him.

Angus rocked back on his heels, surprise dawning on his face, and Harold threw his arms up instinctively, waiting for the retaliation. But after a second, Angus just reached out his hand, and gently cupped Harold’s cheek.

“Are you sure?” he whispered. Not trusting his words, Harold just nodded. So Angus leaned in, and kissed him again, and this time it lasts until they are both out of breath, laughing and grinning and sharing each other’s warmth.

It wasn’t over. Not really. He’d carry the war with him as long as he lived, he knew that much. But here in their rooms, with Angus by his side, Harold thinks that this time, he can win.

*

“What did you say?”

Tabatha’s hands fly to her face. Her eyes are wide, wild – she stands, stammering. “I-I didn’t mean to-Alice, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“Tabatha,” Alice says softly. She stands, too, and the wind whips her hair back out of her face. Behind them, the church bell chimes the hour. Tabatha is still staring at Alice, her face flushing.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I just…look at you. You’re not the frightened girl I met those years ago, are you? You’re a writer now, you have a home and a life, and I just came crashing in like this.” She swallows, looking down at her scuffed boots. “I should leave.”

Alice laughs, a soft, high sound. Confusion dimming her eyes, Tabatha stares at her.

“You think I have everything worked out now?” She steps forward and takes Tabatha’s hands – Tabatha recoils slightly from the touch, but doesn’t let go. “You sound like you’ve been having real adventures, travelling around like that. Better than staying in London.”

Tabatha manages a wry smile. “It wasn’t quite as romantic as all that.”

“But still. Look at me. I have a book, and a house, and a meeting once a month with a publisher who wants a new story from me. But I’ve already written the one I had.” Alice pauses, realising as she says it aloud that it is true. “The past. Everything that’s been. I want to write a story of the future. One that isn’t just me, in one little room, on my own again.”

She hasn’t thought about it. She’s just been living, day by day by day, ever since the war ended and the bombs stopped falling. She told herself then that she wasn’t the only one emerging from a shelter, blinking in the sunlight with no idea what to do next. She wrote a book that reminded her of someone she’d lost. Someone from her past. And the clock ticked, and the sun rose and set, and she lived as she could. Her life was ticking by, second by second. Running out of time, even though she had much of it.

“I want a story that’s an adventure,” she says, almost to herself. “A traveller, going into the world. Doing something. A future.”

“What are you saying?” Tabatha asks. Her tone trembles with trepidation, with caution. But Alice smiles, and brushes her hand against Tabatha’s cheek.

“Kiss me,” says Alice Spencer, and leans in closer. There is a gleam in Tabatha’s eye, and once more colour flushes to her face. She cups Alice’s chin in one hand, gently tilts it towards her. Their noses brush, and with a chuckle Alice wraps her arms around Tabatha’s body, locking her into an embrace. She is here, she thinks. She is here, and she is alive, and the sun is shining with the light of a golden afternoon.

When their lips touch, it feels like a beginning.

*

And somewhere, in some other dream, a pale boy dressed all in red with a copper coronet circling his brow wakes with a smile from a golden vision, of friends long left behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this got away from me. I was originally going to write a quick fix-it post-canon thing - 10k words later, this was what I had. I just wanted to explore these characters, as much as I could. What they all did after the war, how they would grow and change and thrive in the new world left behind by bombs...it just gripped me. This took me a long time to write, but I'm so glad I decided to finish it.
> 
> Would you believe I did a fair amount of research for this fic? Things like evacuees being recalled by parents just in time for the Blitz and underage kids being told to write the number 18 on a bit of paper and put it in their shoe so they could say they were 'over 18' are real historical anecdotes - the latter is told of England and America, and it might not be true exactly, but it does reflect the kind of attitude people had at the time. Also, that last line is a reference to Alice Through the Looking-Glass - Alfred is filling the role of the Red King.
> 
> Let me know if you enjoyed this! Or if you didn't - any feedback is welcome. Thanks for reading!


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